Sales and Marketing Performance Blog

"I'm sorry to tell you that we are restructuring the company and we have to let you and twelve others go."

Ever been laid off? I have - and chances are that at some time in your life it could happen to you. Layoff's happen, it's a fact of life in our time and it's no big deal. Companies re-organize, merge, get acquired, have a bad quarter and suddenly, headcount becomes a problem.

After 9-11, there were hundreds of thousands of sales and marketing professionals in the Bay Area suddenly unemployed. Long gone is the era of my parents (grand-parents for many readers), when you joined a company and expected to work a lifetime and retire on a pension at 65.

What happens when you do get laid off? How do you get back into the workforce and perhaps more importantly, how do you win the job you really want, when there are potentially dozens or even hundreds of others applying for the same job? Hint - be different!

Wil Loesel (www.linkedin.com/in/wloesel) worked for Time Warner Cable as a sales manager and was recently laid off due to a restructuring. Wil visited my Website earlier this month and viewed our "Your PowerPoint Presentations Suck Webinar" and decided to apply some of the ideas he learned in the Webinar to differentiate himself in his job search.

Wil's Story

"I had an interview for a B2C Manager position on May 5th. I had prepared a presentation a week earlier for another company I was interviewing at and was working on tailoring it for my interview the next day. I watched your webinar the evening prior to my interview and decided I wanted to change my entire presentation.

I stayed up all night (until 8am) revising the presentation. I then slept for 2 hours, woke up and kept working, all the way until my interview. I wrote and memorized talking points and stories for each slide (keeping the slides visual, using only a word or two and a picture) and let my voice present the story."

Wil's Before Slides

There is nothing wrong with Wil's before slides, it's just that they are typical, the same meaningless graphics, too much information and have a memory retention lifecycle for the viewer of one mouse-click.
This is one of the worst slides in Wil's old deck, but it's so familiar. I've seen something like this many times and when I see it my eyes glaze over it and move on. 

This article is the third in a series of articles on aligning marketing and sales with buying behavior and it will be of value to sales and marketing professionals who wish to adapt their process to align with buyer behavior.
 


The first article in the series, "A Guide to Aligning Marketing & Sales Engagement with Buying Process" discussed buyer behavior and how it is affected by risk. Last week's article, The B2B Buying Cycle and How to Influence it, pt. 1 is an in-depth review of the formative stages in the buying process and the role of sales and marketing in early adopter engagement as well as the risks to the supplier.

Phase 4: Assessment

Congratulations, you made it through Position, the graveyard of most opportunities. Chances are you are well on your way to a sale to an important new customer, but don't put the champagne in the fridge yet, it could be months before a formal transaction. 

The Assessment phase is a necessary step in a post Enron-world and the era of corporate accountability to satisfy that due diligence is carried out, compliance issues are met and risks are properly considered. 

In the assessment phase the organization is weighing both the upside and the risks in implementing early stage technology. Qualitative and quantitative performance information is sought, as well as assessment of upside, risks, plus all costs. Assessment involves assembly of a project team, proof of concept or pilot to create evidence & gather data. 

Role for Marketing

I asked John McTigue from Kuno Creative to contribute the three marketing segments on this blog as they are engaged with a number of current customers on exactly these deliverables.

Marketing automation is more than sending an email to a list of buying stakeholders and tracking form submissions. It starts with aligning your sales and marketing teams so that they are on the same page with respect to:

• Understanding the sales funnel concept and how it aligns with buying-cycle stages,
• Understanding the demand generation and lead nurturing process,
• Agreeing to criteria for buy-cycle stages, including lead scoring thresholds and sales-ready events and triggers,
• Understanding and agreeing to the definition of a sales qualified lead and handoff between marketing and sales with respect to criteria and CRM integration,
• Feedback (or closed loop marketing) to the marketing automation system (and team) based on sales engagements and status updates,

Role for Sales

• Work with mentor/champion/buyer to implement a sequence of events for the assessment/evaluation,
• Support the proof of concept; where possible, seek to influence the construction of the assessment,
• Work internally within the supplier organization to support the assessment and provide technical support resources,
• Do not commence an assessment unless you know what the outcome of a successful evaluation will be.

Risks for Sales

• Pilot or proof of concept not properly specified or outcomes unclear,
• Internal adversaries influence the assessment criteria to make it hard for the supplier to succeed,
• The product doesn't work or deliver the anticipated result. (When this happens, it may be time to find another job.)

Risk Mediation

1. The sales team needs to lead the client "let me share with you our process that has helped others make the transition...".
2. Influence the construction of the assessment.
3. Get your best minds focused on this vital task.
4. An assessment takes time, effort and resources and exposes the supplier to considerable risk.

Do not start an assessment until you know what the outcome will be if your trial is successful. 

Phase 5: Case

The Case phase converts the Assessment into a project to acquire the product or solution. 

The case phase involves creation of a formal business case, assignment of internal resources and budget.

• Uses the output of the Assessment phase, 
• Possibly includes analysis of alternative solutions to arrive at final cost estimates and an ROI, 
• Likely to use 3rd party analyst data if available and independent comparisons of vendors and costs
• In this phase, the Case is pushed back and forth between the mentor and the sponsor (champion) until the sponsor is happy all relevant business and political goals are served.
• Budget is applied and the acquisition made public to potential suppliers.
• The buyer may issue an Invitation to Tender (ITT) or Request for Proposal (RFP) to satisfy purchasing rules. At this stage the case could be passed to purchasing to formally engage suppliers in the procurement process 

Role for Marketing

Marketing's role is to assist the buyer in their journey towards becoming a customer. 

1. It starts with buyer persona and messaging that addresses buyers directly at each stage in their personal decision process.  
2. Demand generation campaigns tuned to buyer needs at the beginning of the journey (top of the sales funnel) attract new leads that are pre-qualified by virtue of targeting and messaging. 
3. Lead nurturing campaigns keep potential buyers engaged and help them to become introduced to your products and services at their own pace.
4. Calls to action at each step in the lead nurturing chain enable buyers to move forward when they are ready. 
5. Marketing is responsible for creating the content that maps to each buyer persona and decision stage and for developing marketing automation workflows for demand generation and lead nurturing campaigns. 
6. Ideally, sales and marketing work together to define lead scoring criteria for buyer behavior and to develop workflows for managing leads and handing them off to sales reps when they are ripe for purchase via CRM.

Role for Sales

1. Set the agenda for the RFP/ITT or expectations/outcomes in a Term-Sheet, or Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) if the transaction is informal.
2. Working through the needs analysis with the client and understanding the issues, goals and concerns of each constituent in the buying group. 
3. Generate business support for the Case by demonstrating (if appropriate), that your product can help them achieve goals and overcome these issues.
4. Providing assistance with cost/Return On Investment (ROI) models.
5. Provide relevant examples and proof points via case studies and where appropriate, through reference calls with satisfied customers.
6. Use briefing books, white-papers, Webinars and presentations to circulate ideas 

Risks 

• Insufficient executive sponsorship (salespeople have only one key player on their team and their champion leaves).
• A late-coming competitor engages internally though their champion and cleverly changes the ground rules at the executive level.
• You receive an inbound inquiry asking for information on your products, and pricing. There is a sense of urgency and the buyer is not sharing with you all of their issues.

Risk Mediation

• Meeting key stakeholders involved in the decision is mandatory,
• Fight the battle on your terrain, fight to influence the assessment and the outcome of a successful business case,
• Beware of the Inbound Inquiry with a short time to respond; you may be invited to compete to make up the numbers in a deal where your competition has been working for months to set the agenda and you are being invited along for the ride.

Phase 6: Transaction

The transaction phase confirms project details to all internal and external stakeholders. Procurement may become involved for a formal acquisition.

This could require competitive tendering, a short-listing of possible vendors, demonstrations and selection committees, the conclusion of which will be the award of the contract to the successful supplier.

Role for Marketing

In the final stages of the buy cycle, marketing also plays an important role in providing Sales with the lead intelligence and content they need to overcome objections and close the sale. 

Bottom funnel content such as case studies and video testimonials can help to sway buyers on the fence, and lead behavior monitoring can signal their intentions to the sales team so that they can prepare the most effective approach to closing. 

Once the sale is finalized, feedback from buyers as well as sales reps arms the Marketing team with valuable information for reaching new leads and nurturing them throughout the buyer cycle.

Role for Sales

1. Close the sale at the best possible price. If the answers to the following two questions are not yes and yes, do not begin to negotiate price. 
   1. Are we the chosen vendor?
   2. Is price the only remaining obstacle to doing business?
   (Customer Centric Selling, Bosworth and Holland)
2. Execute a Sequence of Events where the outcome is an order on completion of a successful assessment and business case.
3. Salespeople should strive to time the order outcome other than at the end of quarter. 

Risks

1. Insufficient Stakeholder coverage results in your offering being marginalized by vendors aligned with more powerful executive team members,
2. You get outflanked by a competitor who has blind-sided you and cleverly changed the ground-rules of the evaluation,
3. Your champion or executive sponsor leaves or is transferred,
4. A late-coming competitor drops their price through the floor and the client uses this as a lever to get big discounts,
5. The buyer delays the transaction until the end of quarter and engages the purchasing team who are trained in negotiating pricing concessions and compensated on reducing vendor margins,
6. There is an announcement that the company is making a strategic acquisition or is being sold or merged. (Not much you can do about this one - usually means a minimum of 6 months before the opportunity will be revisited - if ever; - back to the drawing board.)

Risk Mediation

• Use a project plan or sequence of events which is timed to conclude in an order, other than at the end of quarter,
• Ensuring you have met with, understand and to the extent possible, satisfy the needs of key stakeholders,
• Keep your mentors and champions involved in the machinery of the purchasing process; this is particularly important if you have proven a business case, established ROI and the purchasing team is being very aggressive in their negotiation stance,
• Be prepared to stand your ground against professional purchasing teams; call in your champion,
• Be prepared to walk if you cannot close the transaction on acceptable terms.

The B2B Buying Process - and how to influence it.

Buyer behavior has changed radically in the past 5 years; sales process unfortunately in most companies has not adapted and marketing has been slow to adapt.

I first noticed these changes 10 years ago, when buyers would come to meetings knowing more about the products and competitive approaches that I did. I began working on aligning buying and selling processes after meeting Dominic Rowsell, author of "Why Killer Products Dont Sell", on which much of this work is based. 

This article is the second in a series of articles on aligning marketing and sales with buying behavior and it will be of value to sales and marketing professionals who wish to adapt their process to align with buyer behavior. Last week's article "A Guide to Aligning Marketing & Sales Engagement with Buying Process" discussed buyer behavior and how it is affected by risk.

The beauty of this approach is that it's universal, simple and based on actual buyer behavior. When you understand each of the steps, you can ask buyers where they are in their buying process. Salespeople typically think that the sales opportunity is one or two steps in advance of where the buyer actually is in the buying cycle and this is a primary contributor to forecasting inaccuracy.

Phase 1: Identify  

The buying process starts with an idea at Identify. 

The Identify phase is usually an internal customer activity, as a result of an executive off-site meeting and blue-sky thinking, brainstorming opportunities or as a result of a strategy session. Business executives are constantly looking to identify trends in segments and markets which may yield opportunity.

A buying cycle can be initiated in answer to CXO questions like, "how can I grow revenue, expand reach, or contain cost", etc. Similarly business leaders look for economies of scale, acquisitions and to identify important customer groupings as well as emerging technologies that could help them become more competitive. Think about the last time you bought something of value...it was likely months after the idea came to you that you actually made a purchase.

Role for Marketing

Most B2B buying cycles now begin with an Internet search, but it's probably not a search for product in the first instance. Developing Mind-Share is the imperative for marketing and to get found in a Google search in response to the type of query your target buyers are using to identify possible approaches to solving the above problems. 

Marketing's role is publishing fresh and engaging ideas in various forms of content in blogs, videos, article marketing, social media. Thought-leadership content takes time and intellectual-effort to create, but is worth the effort as it creates an ongoing legacy of Web pages that create brand awareness as well as providing an evergreen source of ongoing referral traffic.

Role for Sales

1. Understand the Value-chain of the customer's business - this is research and may not involve customer contact. 
2. Engage CXO's in existing accounts in mindshare development in strategy sessions (not product related), but designed to truly understand the customer's business and to share ideas.
3. Building connections with the visionaries in client organizations through social media - read their stuff, make comments on and retweet their ideas.

Risks for the Supplier

The likelihood is that salespeople will not be engaged in this phase, unless the sales team is working a multi-level strategy and senior execs are engaged at the top level of the client organization and the account team is proactive in running executive briefings. 

Other risks include:

• The prospective client finds an innovative alternate approach through Google that leads to a competitor when doing "big idea" research,
• Unvalidated market analysis...this means basing your marketing plans and growth assumptions on the size of the opportunity, customer propensity to buy, the price, or any number of factors, based on incorrect assumptions. Get out of the building...read Steve Blank's HBR "Lean Startup Changes Everything"
• Lack of evidence to compare with your offering/idea....this problem is a big issue for start-ups with discontinuous technology.
• The prospect found your Website, but clicked away because they did not understand you or your offerings due to lack of clarity. 

Risk Mediation

If you have a novel product/technology and you are not blogging and using social media to spread your ideas and build mind-share, you are at a distinct disadvantage, regardless of the merits of your technology.

At the outset you are not selling, you are sharing ideas on the Internet and in responding to early stage leads, you are looking to provide help and ideas in conversations of possibility.

Phase 2: Mentor

This phase is about finding and enrolling a Meentor or evangelist in the buying organization to run with/or who is already running with the idea. The Mentor is typically a senior manager or analyst who works with executive team, but is a recommender, not the decision maker.


The Mentor's role is to scope and test feasibility, credibility, acceptability of the idea. The Mentor works with a small team; the idea is still under wraps and not for public consumption in the business. 

• Typically will use the Internet to gather ideas and research.
• May use informal meetings with suppliers to get ideas
• Could use an RFI to gather ideas, but typically will use social networks and Google to gather ideas

The Mentor produces a report for executive team.

If accepted the Mentor will start to plan how the breakthrough idea can be implemented as an initiative, how it will be presented and to whom and the route through the political maze.

Role for Marketing

Effective Content Marketing activity generates mind-share and inbound inquiries through publishing buyer-relevant, keyword rich content and placing it where it will get found on blogs, syndicated and curated Websites and in social media specialist groups.

Marketing Messaging across the Buying Cycle

Role for Sales

The role for sales is to field these inquiries and engage the buyer in a conversation of possibilities. These are early stage inquiries from customers gathering ideas and information. 

1. Develop a high level engagement plan; this is not a detailed account plan or a blue-sheet; more an outline of the possible opportunity, the key players involved and the next steps for both buyer and supplier. (Mind-mapping is a perfect way of collecting and sharing high-level ideas).
2. Risk analysis on customer vs. opportunity (are they the right fit, are they innovators, do they have money, can you access decision level, etc.)
   This means sales managers need two green lights; one from the client that there is an opportunity for further investigation, and one from salesperson that there is indeed a worthwhile paid engagement (proof of concept, feasibility study) as a next step.
3. Develop conversations with prospects, - (you are not selling, you are consulting at this stage of the process). Visual confections are excellent tools for sharing big ideas, getting buyer to tell their story and getting buy-in from a wider audience in the prospective opportunity.
4. If you are engaging existing accounts, sow seeds, share your ideas via hand written notes with relevant articles attached. (Emails get deleted, hand-written notes get read).
5. Salespeople should try to understand buyer goals and the high level problems they are seeking to overcome.

Salespeople must identify the key players involved in the decision process; the salesperson is looking for a champion who can make things happen and to establish a relationship with that person.

Risks for the Supplier

• If the salesperson is only talking to one person in the opportunity (which is the case most of the time), and that person is a weak mentor and is not giving them access to a champion or to key decision makers on the team, then you are wasting your time.
• The customer wants you to do free work - this is a tricky call for many salespeople. As a rule in selling to the early adopter, all consulting on feasibility, product modification prototyping, etc., MUST be paid for; the supplier can refund if absolutely necessary on conclusion of a successful deal.
• Salespeople are too aggressive in trying to close a deal, instead of engaging in fully understanding the landscape of the account and the needs and goals of the key players in the decision process.
• Over-enthusiasm; the salesperson sees an opportunity and starts building expectation in the selling organization around it, without sufficient diagnosis and qualification

Now a tricky question for salespeople and their managers, What do you put in the forecast when it's still an idea on the horizon? (Answer: it does not appear on the forecast yet.)

Risk Mediation

• Salespeople need to engage powerful sponsors - politely demand it. Use the qualification confirmation letter after each meeting with a buyer. If the buyer fails to respond within a week to your meeting summary letter and confirm that your summary of the meeting is correct and follow through on next steps, (which may include access to stakeholders), they are not a prospect. This letter really works - download the template and use it.
• Identifying key players in the decision process is mandatory (also known as Stakeholder Mapping)
• If the customer is unwilling to pay for consulting on feasibility, proof of concept, or product modification, they are not a prospect.

Phase 3: Position

Public discussion occurs within the key players on the executive team to make resources and funds available. The Mentor works hard to drive the project and their own personal credibility.


If the supplier's product is disruptive, this will arouse emotions and the positioning discussion will become POLITICAL; Change = Emotions.
Without executive sponsorship at this stage, the idea is unlikely to survive the internal battle for resources and funds. 

Many potential opportunities fail to turn into projects because they are killed off at the Position phase by competing priorities or strong adversaries who are either fighting to maintain status quo, are aligned with alternate approaches, or simply don't understand your offering and by default, oppose the idea. 

The transition from Position to Case is the specification for a project for the internal assessment of the idea.

Role for Marketing

After a Website visitor has converted into a lead on your Website, the process of building trust and credibility begins. Lead nurturing is the process of sending the right message to the right prospect at the right time and in most cases, this is hit and miss.

Lead nurturing is a science and it takes dedicated effort and often professional help is needed to set-up and generate meaningful results that justify the investment in the marketing automation platform.

Email is the preferred vehicle for lead nurturing, based on sending appropriate content to segmented lists of your leads, based on buyer persona role, company demographics, interest areas and sundry other criteria. 

Each email should follow a logical path to educate the buyer on the issues and advantages in your approach and move them to take action. Typically top and middle of the funnel content presents an opportunity to read a new article or download a white-paper or e-book.

Role for Sales

Position is make or break time for salespeople, although few ever know when or how it occured. Typically, (80% of the time), the buyer goes radio silent and disappears and the opportunity is over for now.

1. Support your mentor and find a champion
2. Generate business support for an Assessment, meet key players
3. Use the meeting summary and visual confections as well as provididing links to relevant examples and proof points.
4. Use white papers, eBooks and presentations to circulate ideas to stakeholders.
5. Understand the politics and work with the mentor/champion to develop a sequence of events to fully scope the idea.

Risks

• Strong adversaries aligned with the status-quo or alternate approaches,
• Competition for scarce resources means your idea may not survive without sufficient emotional commitment from key stakeholders,
• Behavior or process change are strongly resisted by the "USER"  stakeholder of the innovation,
• Weak or no champion to fight for your solution,
• The opportunity loses momentum and client goes "radio-silent"

Risk Mediation

Any work must be a paid engagement - if the idea is worth doing, it's worth paying a little to be sure. Work the key stakeholders, understand their roles, issues - create vision as to the value of your approach.

Have you ever had a situation where you engaged a prospective lead, they showed a lot of interest, your meaningful conversations led to a demo or a presentation and then the prospective buyer went radio silent and disappeared?

This happens a lot; according to Scott Santucci of Forrester, at least 80% of the time leads fail to make it through the sales process. There are many possible reasons why leads die, but I suggest that most early leads don't make it past the critical internal "fight for funds" (Positioning) phase in the buy cycle. 

Buying behavior has changed permanently and way faster than most sellers and marketers have been able to adapt their processes and their business. Much recent debate about the point at which salespeople are engaged in the buying process leads me to believe that an in depth review of buying-selling process is required. 

The Book that Launched a Thousand Others

"The Diffusion of Innovation," by Everett Rogers is a hugely influential study on the process by which innovations are adopted or diffused into a population. This work, now in its fifth edition was first published in 1962 and has spawned dozens of books like "Crossing the Chasm," by Geoffrey Moore, "The Tipping Point," by Malcolm Gladwell and many others.

This series of article will help you understand why most early stage opportunities die, how buyers buy and how you can better influence a buying cycle in your favor. The articles are based on a collaboration with Dominic Rowsell, co-author of "Why Killer Products Don't Sell" and adds a layer of understanding from the buyers perspective on how they go about buying innovative or disruptive technology and how risk affects vendor engagement.

Understanding the buying process will help sellers to engage and optimize their value chain. This is new thinking for most sales teams and with insights gained from this work, we can adjust our selling process to serve our customers according to how they buy - which is governed by their tolerance for risk. 

Why do People Buy?

People buy for many and varied reasons; our role as sales professionals is to find out the underlying motives of the buyer and once in possession of this knowledge, do our best to satisfy the buyers needs. 

People buy technology solutions and consulting services for dozens of reasons, however most of these can be distilled into the following four business drivers, or buyers compass.

• To grow top-line revenue
• To reduce cost and improve profit
• To create competitive advantage to attack new opportunities
• To reduce risk exposure to the business

How do People Buy?

There is a pathway or process that all organizations and individuals follow to reach purchasing decisions. This pathway is universal and does not vary by culture or geography as it is inextricably linked to human nature. What changes from one company to another is the speed at which organizations or individuals travel through the process.

Every purchase goes through the IMPACT cycle, either formally or informally, - with or without the supplier.


Whether an airline is buying a fleet of Boeing Dreamliners, a small business is buying an innovative new software service, or a family is buying a new laptop computer for the home, every purchase goes through the same process. For a Boeing 787 it may take 20 people two years to decide, for a Laptop in the home, it might take a discussion with your partner, a visit to a few Websites and a couple of hours in total.

The six steps in the buying process use an acronym which is easy to remember as it has huge I-M-P-A-C-T on organizational performance. Every purchase goes through all six phases, with or without the supplier.

Engagement and the Cycle of Adoption 

The Cycle of Adoption shown in the visual confection below, layers the cycle of adoption over the universal buying process IMPACT and introduces the four buying behaviors and the point during the cycle of adoption that they engage buyers.

Mergers and acquisitions hold promise for owners and investors of combinatorial synergies to reduce costs, increase profit, extend market and product coverage, as well as accelerate innovation.

According to the Bloomberg 2012 M&A Outlook, more than 24,700 deals were conducted globally in the year to end November 2011. However, mergers come with a great deal of risk as reflected in failure rates that are reported to be between 40% and 70%. Despite best-laid plans and executive oversight, human factors present the greatest risk and sales-force integration is the toughest merger issue to overcome. 

1+1 does not equal 3

In the B2B technology market we have all seen optimistic mergers and acquisitions struggle to achieve projections and prove a lie to the 1+1=3 equation that drove much of the pre-merger thinking. In many cases, the merger actually destroys shareholder value, where 1+1 is less than 2.

In an excellent article published in the McKinsey Quarterly, the author identifies four essential steps to facilitate successful sales operations integration:-

1. Sharing information about the merger and integration process with customers and the salesforce, (overcommunicate)
2. Build early sales momentum, (focus on quick wins)
3. Look beyond retaining sales reps, (consultants are important too)
4. Review your customer portfolio, (re-allocate resources to most promising customers)

My article seeks to explore several of the high risk factors in any merger;

• Positioning the new merged entity in a way that is engaging and builds confidence in employees and customers,
• Getting the combined sales teams productive and marching to the same tune,

Many post-merger business plans are based on pro-actively cross-selling for the 90-180 day period after the deal closes to generate quick-wins and build confidence and momentum, both internally and in the market; where company A’s sales team is tasked with positioning their own products as well as cross-selling company B’s products into their installed accounts and vice-versa. 



However in conversation with sales and marketing leaders in several merged companies in recent months, despite intensive product and sales training and incentives, the merged sales teams have failed to produce forecast results.

In one company I spoke with the VP of product management; company A products are a market-leader and sales are growing as forecast, yet company B’s products which were fast emerging in different market niche have few leads and fewer sales and heads are beginning to roll.

On closer examination it became clear that there were two key contributing factors that had been glossed over in the pre-merger plans.
1. Product maturity mismatch
2. Selling skill mismatch.

Product Maturity Mismatch

Company A is a market-leader, much of the new business growth comes from referrals and its business is growing at 30% per year. A buyer of company A’s products is a pragmatic early-majority buyer, the buying category is mainstream, company A has a well-established brand and is considered a safe bet. 



Company B however is smaller and fast growing in an emerging market category. Its salespeople are technical and their presentation style hands-on and demonstration-led. Several of their sales stars jumped ship in the first months after the merger, (another big risk in any merger is the top sales and pre-sales stars leaving).

After one year, company A’s traditional customers still view company B’s products as interesting, but risky. The combined sales team struggles with positioning company B’s products in a presentation and demonstration led sales cycle that takes between 60-90 minutes and is heavily PowerPoint oriented.

Selling Skill Mismatch

Company A has a mature product and its buyers engage sales people in a value-added way at the business case or transaction-end of the buy cycle after they have determined needs and are ready to configure and buy the software.

Company B’s products are still crossing the chasm to the early majority. Early adopters see the potential in the products to get a leap on the competitors and are prepared to engage salespeople earlier in a conversation of possibilities. In retrospect, salespeople in company B behaved more like technical consultants than “gung-ho” salespeople and invested lots of time and technical effort to help buyers to understand the risks in their approach as well as the upside.

This by definition is Value-Created Selling, where the insight of the consultants created momentum for change and shaped the buying experience. They were successful in winning pilots and set the agenda for the eventual purchase, however sales cycle times were 12-18 months.

Fans of The Challenger Sale will see an obvious parallel in approaches.

Action Plan for Post-Merger Success:

Human factors far outweigh technology risks in M&A activity. Sales people will not position new products when they lack confidence and are uncomfortable in doing so...they will contnue to position what they know and try to make their numbers selling their familiar product portfolio.

Traditional approaches to sales training in the form of a PowerPoint whipping from product management and a sales portal stuffed full of promotional material will not help to reduce sales ramp-times in post-merger situations any faster than with new hires in existing companies.

Sales enablement programs should begin by clarifying the value in the combined company offerings and the value-creation message.
Salespeople need to be able to tell a convincing story starting with the WHY and the values and vision that drives the combined entity and how that manifests in value to the customer. This is the “Why?” in the Simon Sinek video.

Traditional product training doesn’t work. Post-merger sales enablement needs classroom immersion and spaced repetition post-classroom, combined with sales management coaching, reinforcement and certification.

One approach that has been proven in getting rapid message ownership in salespeople is visual storytelling. Visual storytelling is also extremely effective in helping salespeople to communicate their "big idea" quickly using visual confections when in front of buyers.



Hands on role-playing and repetition using actual prospective customer situations as well as storytelling skill development will enable salespeople to exit the training room with the confidence to engage buyers and exercise their new skills.

Post training reinforcement, coaching and competency certification will drive behavior change to help achieve sales integration and revenue targets.

Last week I met with a top sales enablement professional, whom I'll call Bob. The purpose of the meeting was to exchange ideas and during the meeting I was introduced to the Three Humped Camel. This person will remain nameless as he started a new job and does not wish the camel phenomena to be tied back his prior employer.

13% of Salespeople produce 87% of Revenue

I raised a question which prompted the discussion after reading Mike Bosworth's latest book, "What Great Salespeople Do". In it, Mike quotes a study of 1100 B2B companies by Greg Alexander of Sales Benchmark Index, which reveals that the old maxim of 20% of salespeople selling 80% of the business is no longer true... it's now 13% of salespeople selling 87% of the business.

When I asked Bob to draw the quota distribution graph for his old firm, he drew something that looked like this.
 
This is obviously just a quick hand-drawn sketch from memory, but the point Bob was making is that the majority of the sales team were not making their numbers and were dispersed around 40% of quota achievement, with a smaller hump around 100% and another hump at around 150% of quota achievement. 

Why Three Humps?

When I asked Bob why the three humps, he explained that the majority of salespeople were not making their numbers for a variety of reasons. 
These reasons varied from;- 

• New hires had not been on-board for a full selling year and sales ramp is 9 months,
• Had not adopted the sales training and enablement tools and had reverted to prior behavior and leaned on PowerPoint to do their selling,
• Weren't going to make it and would soon be leaving,
• Buyer behavior has reduced their status in the relationship to that of order-takers as they were incapable of engaging buyers early in the buying cycle and influencing buyers prior to an RFP.

"The salespeople who were busting their numbers were naturals and would be successful selling anywhere. They lapped up the sales training and new tools they were given and practiced the techniques... but most of all they were great communicators and were confident in themselves and in their knowledge of  the product and their industry." 

"Don't get me wrong, these guys are hard workers too....any salesperson that is knocking it out of the park today is working their butt off." This supports Mike Bosworth's theory in the book, What Great Salespeople Do. The top salespeople are great communicators and great listeners. Most of the sales training and process steps for the last 20 years have served to make the best sales people better and have done little to move the core group.

The next question I asked was, of all the programs you implemented at the old firm, what were the things that actually made a difference in moving the core group up in quota achievement.

What's Working in Sales Enablement

Reinforcement

Reinforcement following an in-classroom training event was critical. Those salespeople that worked closely with their managers to master new skills and techniques in the 3 months post-training were most successful. Those that did not would revert back to their prior behavior and familiar tools.

Streamlined Opportunity Management

"We had a prior generation sales process and opportunity management system that was too complex and just didn't mesh with buyer behavior. We dumped it a couple of years ago in favor of Infomentis, who were subsequently acquired by the TAS group.

Infomentis gave us a streamlined opportunity management - simple is good. Also the customer verifiable outcomes we developed, based on best practices, gave us visibility into the individual selling effort. This enabled sales managers to identify missing steps in the selling process and manage sales reps through what is a complex and lengthy selling cycle."

Accreditation 

"The World we are operating is becoming ADD as a whole. Salespeople have very short attention spans. If a sales tool or technique takes more than 5 minutes to learn, or a concept more than 5 minutes to watch/do in an E-Learning environment, salespeople will not use it."

"We created an accreditation framework backed by classroom and small-chunk E-Learning and in-field coaching from sales managers that enabled salespeople to manage their way through acquiring skills and conceptual knowledge. Salespeople are able to progress from rookie to sales manager over time and at each level they are given accreditation in conjunction with achieving their sales quota. "

Conclusion

1. Understanding buyer behavior, buyer risk tolerance and adapting and integrating marketing and selling systems to match the behavior of target buyers is key to survival and growth. 
2. Creating and adapting sales enablement tools and programs that salespeople will actually use and that make a difference is a work-in-progress in most companies. (Visual Storytelling is one of the things that is working.)
3. Understanding what great salespeople do, will be the subject of a subsequent blog and review of the book. In the meantime, don't wait for the review, get the book. Better still, if you want to learn what great salespeople do, you can join Mike in Park City UT, late this month for an intensive 2.5 day Storyleaders workshop

 

Email data solutions provider, TowerData went live with their redesigned Website last week, with a stunning new appearance and a message that grabs your attention after landing on any page on the Website.

TowerData Background

TowerData helps companies increase the performance of their email marketing by validating email addresses for improved deliverability, providing intelligence about email leads and subscribers, and increasing size of the email list. TowerData has been in business since 2001 and has helped thousands of customers improve their email marketing results and take their email list to the next level.

We created the new TowerData brand message in partnership with enterprise inbound marketing agency, Kuno Creative (Kuno),  who created the redesign and new content and managed the website transformation project. Kuno is managing the content marketing, demand generation and marketing automation program for TowerData.
 
TowerData is a HubSpot customer and has already been successful with its demand generation activities, generating a predictable volume of inbound leads and doing well with keyword rankings. As a next step, TowerData wanted to attract and convert more qualified sales leads by improving its brand messaging and content.

Goal: Brand Update and Website Revamp

Tom Burke, CEO of TowerData stated, “the project was driven by a need to update and focus our brand and revamp our 6-year-old website.” Prior to the redesign the TowerData Website, although functional, looked dated and the message did not clearly identify how TowerData served its clients or what differentiated their services in a highly competitive market. TowerData sought to make its core service strengths readily apparent and easily understood by website visitors. 

Complication: Prior History

TowerData had already identified a redesign and branding vendor who proposed a traditional approach of interviewing stakeholders, including TowerData customers, to understand the business, and pull out the themes and message from there. Our approach would involve more than a brand refresh.

Resolution: Create a Messaging Architecture

TowerData selected Admarco and Kuno for the messaging and Website transformation, and we began the project with the development of the TowerData Buyer-Persona, which details the roles and thought processes of representative buyers. The messaging process was done entirely over the Internet to save time and money and we used the MindManager tool from MindJet.com to capture the information in a brainstorming session attended by Kuno and top TowerData stakeholders.  



With the Buyer Persona created, we moved to developing the Messaging Architecture and began brainstorming the Win Themes and Positioning Pillars. 

The Messaging Architecture is developed by identifying product usage Win Themes, i.e. how the products are used to create value, solve problems and help buyers achieve their goals.  

Win-Themes are self-describing information chunks that encapsulate feature, function and benefit in a meaningful sentence. In other words a Win-Theme describes what the product or service is, what does it does for the buyer when they use it and what that means in terms of value for the buyer. The brainstorming and review process required five Web Conferences to complete and took around about 10 hours to capture and edit over a period of 2 weeks. 

Positioning Pillars are used to position the product in the market vs. competition. Some of our clients are unsure of their Pillars at the start of the process, but in TowerData’s case they knew they wanted to position around Email Append, Email Intelligence and Email Validation. 

Content Creation Templates

Content Creation Templates are used for generating content from the Messaging Architecture and Buyer Persona. For TowerData, we created more than 20 templates, one for each target buyer goal.

The template development process starts with selection of the buyer goal and we populate it with the related problems and consequences from the buyer persona. We then select the appropriate product usage Win-Themes, and write the solutions summary, highlight the keywords and an attention grabbing Hook that can be used in an email header or call to action. Templates are completed with a proof point to support the product usage scenario and the value contribution.

Content Creation templates are the key to creating consistent content that can be used across the organization by people who were not involved in the messaging development process. Content Creation templates enable professional writers quickly generate Web page and blog content that is keyword rich, technically accurate, resonates with buyers and highlights the value in using the products/services. There is no limit to the number of templates that can be generated and combinations of Win-Themes can be used to fine-tune value messaging for very specific buyers.

Lessons Learned:

1. The Internet-only brainstorm process was less than ideal as the Mindjet tool interface and screen painting process over the Net was slow and difficult to follow as the brain-pattern became more complex. (We are creating a SaaS Messaging development tool to enable collaborative real-time data entry to improve the message-capture process and hosting of the Messaging Architecture. Messaging is not static. As new buyers and needs are identified, new product capabilities are added, new market segments entered and market conditions change, your messaging needs to change. Our goal is to enable our customers to manage their own messaging on completion of the project).
2. This was the first time we have used the content creation templates and they served as a critical link in extracting intelligent copy from the Messaging Architecture and formatting it for reuse by others not invoved in the brainstorming process to generate quality copy.
3. Key-word rich Win-Themes are high value deliverables that can be reused countless times throughout marketing and sales messaging and serve to reinforce the brand value and align sales and marketing conversations. 
4. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and we will report in a few months on the results from the project in a comprehensive case-study.

TowerData CEO's thoughts 

Tom Burke, TowerData CEO, remarked on the process, “Rebranding was much more to us than a new logo or graphics. We wanted someone who could help us articulate and crystallize our message and positioning, and then convert that into engaging content. The Admarco process provided a comprehensive view of our services from the buyer’s perspective and a robust structure that we can use with Kuno Creative to develop our content.”

A Final word from Kuno Creative

John McTigue, Kuno’s EVP and Co-Owner, has been guiding this process from the Kuno Creative side. “What’s often missing from any brand refresh or website redesign project is understanding who the customer is and what they want, then tailoring the entire content strategy to fulfill their needs.

Admarco’s interview and modeling process provided a structured way to develop buyer personas and easily turn their needs into product-usage Win-Themes to drive a content marketing strategy and editorial calendar. We plan to incorporate this process into many of our enterprise inbound marketing client accounts to help them achieve success faster and more efficiently.”

The Challenger Sale

This book was a breath of fresh air with insights on how customers buy, what they value from a professional sales person and how today's top performing sales professionals behave.  

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation, targets the aspiring sales professional and sales leader. However, it is much more. 

The book’s message is one of marketing strategy and tactics - how to attract, build and sustain customer relationships that result in sales.  You may have a killer product, but we all know they don't sell themselves and success in the market through getting your killer product/service sold is the critical factor for survival.   

Old Wine in New Bottles?

The skeptic surfaced in me as I began reading the categorization of sales behavior types, - everything old is new again, but I disciplined myself to read on.  The findings are consistent with my experience in sales and as a management consultant....but again this is hardly earth shattering.  

The book describes, in detail, the attributes that define “Challenger behavior.”  As I read on, I found the research evidence to be insightful, credible and compelling and it resonated with me.  Of the five sales behaviors profiled, for more complex sales, the “Challenger” seriously out-performed all others.

Reframing the Sales Training Argument

The Corporate Executive Board has been effective in applying "Challenger selling" methods to the sales performance industry and is indeed disrupting the status-quo thinking and established players in the market, even though it is one of a number of marketing and sales companies with a "disruptive" sales message and method.



Based on the evidence, there is a compelling case supporting the development of Challenger capabilities in sales organizations within B2B technology and services companies. 

Changing Sales Behavior Requires Investment and Effort

In my 20 years of management consulting, working on large corporate change initiatives and business start-ups, I often encountered dysfunction and disconnect between Sales and Marketing.  Even more damaging was the frequent disconnect between the “C” suite and an understanding of what a professional sales capability requires and may accomplish for the company.  
In complex B2B sales, building a professional sales capability is a competitive advantage.

As a consultant, I worked with business leaders who believed they could impact results, simply by turning the “quota and commission dial.”  Without investment in a marketing capability to generate leads and the knowledge and skills to engage, influence and generate sales, the result I witnessed was a loss of people, customers and earnings.... and subsequent dismissal of the executive in question.

A professional sales capability is an investment. Where and how to invest and ensuring the company functions with a killer sales capability is the business of the “C” suite.
 

Challenger Requires a Shared Company Vision

Later chapters in The Challenger Sale examine the factors for effective sales leaders and link the Challenger attributes to what is required to coach, develop and enable success in sales.  The authors also comment on information linking “Challenger” attributes to those departments serving internal customers - marketing, HR, IT.  
“The CIO Executive Board found that between 2007 and 2009, the percentage of business leaders rating their IT departments as “effective” at applying IT capabilities to business needs actually declined”. . . . “In a 2009 survey of more than 5,000 end users, we found that a stunning 76 percent disagreed with the statement their job performance had improved because of new systems delivered by IT.” 
Could this perception be an expectation that the system is the solution?

Functions in silos are leading to disconnects in implementation of technology. What is needed is a shared vision and culture of collaboration; all areas of the business with a Challenger focus - one of how to create value for customers. This focus emanates from "C" suite leaders. In the current business era, there is an imperative that Marketing, HR, Sales and IT work to a shared business strategy, vision and culture.   

Conclusion

In my early 20s, I discovered a sales role was the way to advance my career.  As a woman in an incumbent sales force of men, I determined to build the knowledge and communications skills that would lead to credibility and success. I was determined and it worked.  I moved into leadership roles in Marketing and subsequently became a management consultant using the knowledge, skills and experience I gained as a sales professional.  As the “Challenger” describes, I found confidence and courage in competence.  

I believe The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation is a blueprint for building success in the marketplace.  It may not be easy – it will be effective!

Kathleen Carr is an experienced International Management Consultant.

This week I met with the marketing leadership team of a successful and fast growing B2B technology company with a disruptive innovation. The purpose of the meeting was to understand their marketing goals and to explain our process for brand positioning and method for connecting website message, brand message and sales-ready messaging to the core value proposition.  

It was a very interesting meeting. The company leadership recognized they are not addressing the need for mind-share development to enable them to move into new markets with their existing product suite.
 

Why Me Messaging

In other words, they are doing a great job messaging to their existing markets with “Why Me” product messaging and content and are effectively taking a larger share of the pie. However, they recognize they are largely invisible on the Internet to a new set of enterprise buyers who are focused on a higher-order set of problems and who use a different vocabulary to that of current users.  

Why Change Messaging

This is where a “Why Change" message, coupled with opportunity and attuned to the buyer’s strategic imperative for change is required to get visionaries and early adopters to pay attention and to grow the pie. The opportunity to move into enterprise markets will enable the company to sell order of magnitude larger deals to customers looking to create competitive flexibility vs. fulfilling the need for a single unit of their solution into a department that has identified the need.  

Positioning

According to Wikipedia, “positioning is the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or organization.” Further down on the same Wikipedia page is this statement, “An important component of hi-tech marketing in the age of the world wide web is positioning in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, which can be accomplished through Search Engine Optimization”.  

The marketers I met with are 4-year veterans of marketing automation platforms HubSpot and Marketo and mature in their understanding of demand generation and marketing automation and the direct link between quality content creation attuned to the buyers needs and goals and higher search engine rankings.

Mind-share is Linked to Search Engine Positioning

They understand that in order to achieve positioning in the mind of the buyer, they first need to achieve page 1 search engine positioning for the key-phrases their new audience is likely to be using… and this means generating quality content attuned to buyers needs and goals.  

I didn’t need to sell them on the need for a structured approach to marketing messaging or the need for a messaging architecture to enable content creation across the company that resonates with what buyers are trying to achieve, -they are actively seeking it.  

Product Training isn't Enough

Similarly they recognize that their direct sales team is well equipped with product knowledge to respond reactively to growing demand, where the salesperson responds to an RFP, configures the solution, submits a pricing proposal and processes the order…. hopefully.

They admit they are poorly equipped to have proactive “why change” conversations with enterprise buyers however. They recognize the need to equip the sales team with tools, training and a story to enable them to engage executives in "why change" as well as getting better at their "why me" conversations.  

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

There are many who might say that there is nothing wrong with focusing on their existing market and full speed ahead with sales and marketing. However with a disruptive innovation, I view the creation of mind-share in new markets as a marketing imperative in addition to those they plan to dominate.

Kodak is an excellent example of the “innovators dilemma” – they grew to dominate every segment of their highly profitable silver-halide film processing market and nearly went under because they failed to adapt their business to digital image processing.
Connect Buyers to your Big Idea

I'm not in inside sales, I'm a consultant, but 95% of my interaction with prospects and customers occurs over the phone and Internet, so I think I can bring some insight to inside sales pro's, consultants and particularly SMB salespeople working from home. 

In the past 18 months I have used Glance, Fuze, Webex, GotoMeeting, Adobe QuickConnect and Join.me, either as a tool provided by the company, or as a personal subscriber. I have no financial affiliation with any of these providers. This assessment is application-specific based on my work profile and may not be relevant in your work environment.

If you require fast screen-sharing and hassle-free, download-free interaction with prospective clients and customers, then tools that require a downloadable client are sub-optimal. I don't use a Webcam in my conferences, so I don't need the higher-end video capabilities that come with Webex and Gotomeeting. If I want to do a face-face Web meeting I will use Skype, but the dynamic is usually social with a friend or acquaintance and the connection set up in advance.

Containing costs

Containing cost is important in a small business and the overhead of CRM, web conferencing, phones, survey software, marketing automation, and all of the other ancillary monthly subscriptions can quickly run into thousands of dollars a month. High cost and an intermittent usage profile that is what led me to explore alternatives to the conferencing heavyweights Gotomeeting and Webex I had used in the past. My subscription to Gotomeeting when I canceled was $39.00 per month. Join.me is free for up to remote 10 viewers.

"I'd like to share my screen with you now"

If you have a prospect on the phone and you determine that it is appropriate to show them a demonstration screen, report, visual confection or some form of sales aid, you need a tool that will in a matter of seconds, enable your prospect to view your screen, regardless of the browser, firewall or security settings on either computer. This is where Join.me shines. Join.me has evolved from LogMeIn, which you may have experienced if you have had a specialist provide remote support to diagnose a problem on your PC or Mac at some point. A brief story to illustrate.

Frustration

Have you ever had a Gotomeeting or Webex with an important prospective customer and you just couldn’t get both parties to communicate over the link? 

Well it happened to me. I had developed a one page visual confection to show the prospective customer how their sales team could tell their story on a one page visual, instead of using their traditional 10 slide PowerPoint sales deck.

The first 20 minutes of our scheduled 30 minute meeting were wasted as we tried multiple video conferencing tools and browsers….nothing worked, no visual communication through their firewall.  

Resolution

This does not happen with Join.me, because there is no client download to install on the other end and there are no network or browser dependencies. The prospect is viewing your screen.

Let's continue our example. "Ms. Prospect, are you sitting in front of a computer? You are, - great. I'd like to share my screen with you to illustrate the point I would like to discuss. In your browser can you go to Join.me/rmarkgibson and I will start a session". I click on the Join.me logo in my toolbar and a session starts and as soon as the client arrives at my Join.me address they "knock" to request entry and I begin to share my screen. 

If your client is on a tablet or smart phone, they will need to download a viewer, and this applies to all of the conferencing services.

Join.me is free for up to 10 users. I elected to use Join.me Pro and am paying less than $12 per month for a vanity URL (join.me/rmarkgibson) and it allows me to share my screen with up to 250 others. Audio is via VOIP or a non-toll free number.

Join.me does not have recording capabilities, but if I want to record my Webinars I use Screen-Flow to create them as my experience with the quality of recorded Webinars using high-end tools has been mixed.

Here are several reviews of Web conferencing tools that may be of interest.
http://lifehacker.com/5878067/five-best-online-meeting-services

http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2012/102212-desktop-videoconferencing-test-263197.html

http://web-conferencing.findthebest.com/compare/42-66/WebEx-Meeting-Center-vs-join-me

http://web-conferencing.findthebest.com/compare/1-66/GoToMeeting-vs-join-me